Biodegradation Behaviour of Different Textile Fibres: Visual, Morphological, Structural Properties and Soil Analyses

Abstract

The biodegradation of fabrics of various types of fibres: cotton (CO), viscose (CV), Modal (CMD), Tencel (CLY), polylactic acid (PLA), polyethylene teraphtalate (PET) and polyacrylonitrile (PAN)) under the attack of microorganisms were studied using the soil burial method for two different burial intervals (1 month and 4 months). As opposed to previous studies, all analyses were simultaneously conducted for both of the buried fabrics and soil samples so as to examine the biodegradation and environmental effect as a whole in the same study. Visual observations, weight losses, fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used to examine the biodegradation behaviour. The total organic carbon (TOC), the total number of bacteria and the total number of fungi in the soil samples were studied to understand the soil content during the degradation of the fibres. The study revealed that the cellulosic fabric samples changed both physically and chemically even after 1 month. Among the cellulosic fibres, weight losses of modal, cotton, and viscose fabrics were close to 90%, showing high degradation, whereas Tencel fibre had the lowest with 60% for a 4 month burial interval. Within the synthetic fabrics, only PLA fabric lost weight.